The Red Crest

  I’ve got a bad feeling somehow! Although the thought filled his head, he didn’t let it out of his mouth. Clutching the cold barley tea in both hands, Haruyuki swallowed hard and waited for what she would say next.

  “It’s not just Burst Linkers who use light techniques, right? I mean, you’ve got the problem itself to disprove that: Metatron. So then, if there was a reasonable Enemy who attacked with lasers, you could practice as much as you like with it, and then bang! Right?”

  “G-giga wait!” he hurriedly interjected. “You can call it ‘reasonable,’ but even the small Enemies are seriously strong!”

  Chiyuri shrugged lightly. “But the Wild-class one we hunted on the way back from special training the day before yesterday was a pretty easy victory?”

  “Th-there were eight people hunting, and two of them were kings! And to start with, we’re not going to be able to find a small Enemy that attacks with lasers that easily.”

  “And yet, wouldn’t you know, there was one livin’ real close.” A catlike smile spread across Chiyuri’s lips, and she snapped the fingers of her right hand. “Setagaya Area Number Two. With your wings, we can just zoom over.”

  “Huh. Y-you already found one? How…Did someone tell you about it?” Haruyuki asked in reply, baffled.

  “I told you.” Chiyuri’s smile took on a bashful note. “If there was something I could do, I wanted to do it. I figured I should try finding it myself before turning to other people, so last night, I did some wandering in the Unlimited Neutral Field. And luckily, I found a teeny Enemy that shoots lasers.”

  “Bu— You…” After holding his breath for a second, Haruyuki shouted, at a volume that would just barely not leak outside the room, “A-are you crazy?! Diving alone, and on top of that messing with Enemies?! I mean, you could’ve run into some dangerous Burst Linkers or been targeted by a Beast class and ended up in unlimited EK!”

  “It’s fine. I made sure to set an automatic disconnect timer, and you know how hard Lime Bell is, right? On top of that, I have healing abilities, so I’m not going to end up in unlimited EK that easy.”

  “So you say—,” he began, intending to argue even more vehemently, but then pinched his mouth closed.

  Chiyuri—the Chiyuri Kurashima he’d known since he was born—was exactly this person. Moody, quick to anger, and more hardworking than anyone. She made incredible efforts when no one was looking, and no matter how hard it was for her, she never let it show on the surface; she always smiled sunnily.

  She said she did special training to improve her reaction speed in a full-dive environment in order to succeed in installing the Brain Burst program. Back then, she couldn’t accelerate, of course, so she must have sacrificed her life in the real and devoted herself to serious special training, the kind that makes you bleed, over tens—no, hundreds—of hours.

  “Chiyu, how long did it take you to find that Enemy?” Haruyuki asked.

  After looking a little undecided, Chiyuri clucked her tongue. “Um. A little over three days of inside time.”

  Honest-to-goodness absurdity. But Haruyuki couldn’t reproach her at this stage. Instead, he sat formally on the cushion and bowed his head deeply. “…Thank you, Chiyu.”

  “Hey! Wh-what are you getting all serious for?! Ah! Yikes! We only have ten minutes until Mom calls us. Come on! Hurry up and dive!” Chiyuri shouted, her face red, and took a sip of her barley tea before pulling a small hub and three XSB cables out from her desk drawer. She connected the home server connector on the wall and the hub with the longest cable and then sat down again on the bed, gesturing to Haruyuki to join her. “Come on! Hurry up!”

  “Huh?! Um, what—?”

  “I don’t have a sofa or anything in here, so our only choice is to lie back here! Hurry up!”

  “O-o-okay!” Haruyuki stood up as he was told and sat down next to Chiyuri. Instantly, the palm of her hand was pressing down on his forehead, and he fell back onto the bed. He stiffened up as one end of a cable stretching out from the hub was plunged into his own Neurolinker, and then Chiyuri immediately connected her own before lying down next to him.

  A sweet smell wafted up from his childhood friend, who had only just changed clothes—but leaving him no time to even be conscious of this, a sharp voice flew at him:

  “We dive on the count of three! Here we go. Three, two, one…”

  ““Unlimited Burst!””

  Lucky I didn’t get the command wrong, Haruyuki thought as he fell toward the rainbow-colored ring.

  3

  “I’ve always wanted to say that. The whole ‘on the count of three’ thing,” Lime Bell said, touching down on the virtual ground with her trademark vivid lime-green armor, pointed hat, and the handbell Enhanced Armament that made up her left hand.

  Landing in the field a moment later, Haruyuki grinned wryly beneath his mirrored visor. “You said that so suddenly, I almost shouted the usual direct-link command, you know.”

  “B-be careful! If you do that, you’ll dive into my private space.”

  “That cushion hel— I mean, heaven. Heaven. I kinda want to see it again…almost…”

  “Then once this special training is over—no, after supper—I’ll let you in.” Chiyuri nodded back at him. “Anyway, let’s go outside.”

  Haruyuki looked around at their surroundings, but because they had dived inside a building, all his eyes took in were white walls. He couldn’t identify the stage attributes from this.

  The balcony window was gone, but a narrow passageway stretched out from where the door had been. It should’ve come out into the shared hallway of the condo, but to save time, Haruyuki turned back toward the wall that normally had a mirror in it. He clenched his right hand into a fist and then looked to Chiyuri, behind him, for permission. “Um. You mind if I smash this wall?”

  “Seems overly complicated, but sure, whatever. We do have to build up your special-attack gauge and all.”

  “Okay. Excuse me, then.” He turned to the wall once more, sank down slowly, and twisted his body sharply while at the same time launching a right straight without really pulling his arm back. He was basically unaware of it, but this was close to the way Wolfram Cerberus moved—focusing on avatar mass and rotation speed rather than the swing of the arm. Haruyuki had unintentionally absorbed the fact that the heavy metal colors were more suited to this type of movement than the normal colors from their second meeting and now used a similar technique.

  The punch—which was more like his whole body slamming forward—landed smack dab in the center of the wall, and the shriek of the impact sounded like the bullet from a large rifle hitting its target. But not a single crack appeared in the smooth white surface.

  “H-hey, Haru. Are you okay? Did you take damage?” Chiyuri asked, concerned, since players could only see their own health gauges in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Haruyuki said nothing; he simply continued to fire punch after punch at the wall. He knew without looking that his gauge was not decreasing—and that every bit of the force of his blows was penetrating the wall.

  Crrrrack! Soon, this incredibly loud sound filled their ears, and the southern wall turned to dust. The field beyond it had no sooner sprung into view than Chiyuri shouted again. This time, her voice was bright and welcoming.

  “Whoa! Incredible! It’s so pretty!”

  The sky was a milky white, lustrous like melted pearls. The buildings on the ground were also all pure white, looking very much like temples and sacred spaces, and large, regular octahedron crystals floated above roads and empty lots all over the stage. The transparent gems spun slowly, turning the light from the sky into rainbow spectra dancing on the terrain.

  “A Sacred Ground stage,” Haruyuki murmured as he looked out over the rare, upper-level holy stage. “Been a while since I’ve seen this.”

  “I’ve only seen it once in a normal duel.” Next to him, Chiyuri bobbed her head up and down. “Um, I’m pretty sure you can charge your special-attack gauge by smashing those crystals,
right?”

  “Yeah. And because you’re smashing them in the Unlimited Neutral Field, sometiiiiimes, you get item cards. Apparently.”

  “What? Really?” Lime Bell swung her head to turn her eye lenses—some of the cat-slant of Chiyuri’s own eyes in their shape—on Haruyuki, but she quickly shook her head back and forth. “Nope. No way! We can’t! We’re not here to play today; we’ve got special training. This is no time to go looking for items!”

  “I—I didn’t say anything!”

  “We’re wasting time. Let’s get going! Carrying or piggybacking, which is better?”

  “Uh, um. I’m usually the one who asks tha—”

  “Then ask. Okay. Let’s see. Carrying, then.” The words had barely left her mouth when Chiyuri turned toward the right side of his avatar.

  Fully aware that Chiyuri had managed to completely take the reins here, Haruyuki had no choice but to reach his arms out and fasten them around Lime Bell’s back and legs before lifting her up.

  The green-type avatar excelled in defensive abilities, but she was a little heavy; the resistance he felt in his arms was greater than with Black Lotus or Sky Raker, whom he had similarly carried in his arms like this. But his sense of self-preservation was developed enough that he knew to keep that thought to himself, so he simply remarked, “Okay, here we go,” and his body danced up into the air.

  The Kurashima home was on the twenty-first floor of the condo, so the ground was correspondingly far away, but Chiyuri had once jumped down from the top floor of the Shinjuku Government Building with him, so it was no surprise when she didn’t cry out at the beginning of their free fall. Once they had dropped about twenty meters, he spread the wings on his back and shifted to gliding. Fixing his aim on one of the crystals floating on Kannana Street directly below, he kicked it as he flew past.

  There was an ephemeral clink, and the rainbow crystal shattered. No item card appeared, but his special-attack gauge leapt up to being nearly half-charged. This was enough power in his gauge to be able to fly nonstop to Setagaya. He ascended again and then hovered for a moment at an altitude that allowed them to look out over the city.

  “So where in Setagaya does this laser Enemy pop up?” Haruyuki asked the girl in his arms.

  As she took in the beautiful sight of the Sacred Ground stage, Chiyuri’s eye lenses flashed. “Oh, a little past Sakurajosui Station.”

  “So, this way?” He turned toward the southwest, but rethought this and started to fly due south above Kannana.

  Aratama Suido Road stretched out ten kilometers from the Koenjirikkyo intersection, where Kannana Street crossed Oume Highway, to the Kinuta Purification Plant along the Tama River in the distance. This road was so perfectly straight, it was hard to believe that it lay within the twenty-three wards, and Sakurajosui Station was along it.

  Getting onto Suido Road a little west of the intersection, Haruyuki dropped altitude and flew at full speed a single meter above the pavement. Naturally, his special-attack gauge started to drop precipitously, but there were crystals floating on this road, too, so he head-butted and shattered one he happened to come across.

  Far from being frightened by any of this, Chiyuri cried out “Go-o-o!” like he was a thrill ride at an amusement park. In the blink of an eye, the raised bridge of the Keio Line came into view, running along the border between Suginami and Setagaya Wards. He slipped under this, decelerated, and came to a stop, his legs digging out ruts in the smooth surface of the ground.

  “Phew.” Still tucked neatly in Haruyuki’s arms, Chiyuri let out a small sigh and then lifted her head. “Ahhh, that was fun! We should’ve just kept flying all the way to the end of the road.”

  “Y-you were the one who said we’re not here to play!”

  “Don’t stress about the detaaaails!” Here, she finally jumped out of his arms. She looked around for a minute and then pointed to the east side of the road. “I found the Enemy near that big building there.”

  “Big building?” Haruyuki cocked his head and called up a map of the neighborhood in his mind. If this were the real world, he could have just tapped the map icon on his virtual desktop, but there were no such convenient apps in the Accelerated World. Probably. “I’m pretty sure there’s a university here, maybe? What school was it…?”

  “All the universities are the same on this side!” Chiyuri pointed out in an exasperated tone. “It’s not like you came to take their entrance exam. And there aren’t any Burst Linkers in college.”

  “I—I guess.” What he was actually concerned about was the possibility of a neighboring junior high or high school affiliated with the university.

  In the Unlimited Neutral Field, the places you were most likely to have an unexpected encounter with other Burst Linkers were first, near a portal; second, near a shop; and third, at any point where a large, huntable Enemy popped up—but a junior high or high school was basically next in line. In cases where multiple Burst Linkers attended the same school, they sometimes would use the school grounds as a meeting place in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Haruyuki himself had chosen the Umesato courtyard as the place for his final battle with Dusk Taker two months earlier.

  That said, the flow of time in the Unlimited Neutral Field was accelerated to be a thousand times faster than it was the real world. Haruyuki and Chiyuri could stay on this side for a full day, while only eighty-some seconds would pass in the real world. The odds of crossing paths with other Burst Linkers in the same time and place were basically less than one in ten thousand.

  And for all that, I feel like I still run into people on this side, Haruyuki said to himself before concluding that Setagaya was an empty area and that they were probably okay for now. Automatically, he wrapped an arm around Lime Bell’s waist in a tight hold and took off gently before he realized that his partner was staring intently at Crow’s face.

  “What?”

  “Nothiiiing. I was just thinking you’re getting pretty comfortable with grabbing me.”

  “I—I am not! A-and you were the one who told me to carry you!”

  “Yeah, yeah. Anyway, get a little higher up.”

  “…Yes, ma’am…” Haruyuki would probably never win a discussion with his childhood friend. Fully aware of this, he ascended around twenty meters straight up. When he did, there was indeed a vast space on the east side of Suido Road. The large temples dotting the area were probably the university campus buildings in the real world. But…

  “I can’t see any Enemies or anything.”

  “Hold on a sec,” Chiyuri said and, with some purpose in mind, brandished the large bell of her left arm: the Enhanced Armament Choir Chime.

  As far as Haruyuki knew, the bell had two uses. First was a direct, striking attack. The bell was terrifically sturdy and heavy, and a blow to the head would cause a ferocious bong to assault a player’s auditory system, temporarily stunning them, so it was a fairly useful weapon.

  And the second was, of course, the special attack Citron Call. This had the extremely rare effect of turning back time for the target. When used on an ally, it recovered their health, while when used on an enemy, it returned their hard-won special-attack gauge to zero or forced their armament to unequip; it was appropriately showy for her tiny witch–like appearance.

  But there should have been no need to rewind time in this situation. Wait. That can’t mean application number one. Is she going to hit me on the head?! Haruyuki cringed into himself.

  The bell started to wave back and forth in a slow movement, almost as if in invitation. After a slight lag, a sound more reminiscent of a bell than a chime spread out in waves—riiiing, riiiing. After about ten seconds, Chiyuri lowered her arm, but the sound didn’t stop. Echoing off the surrounding terrain, it propagated endlessly, gradually weakening before fading out.

  What on earth was that?

  Before Haruyuki could ask the question, Chiyuri stretched out her right hand and said, hushed, “Look! There!”

  To his surprise, his eyes followe
d where her finger was pointing and found something crawling out of one of the temples.

  “Huh? An Enemy?! No way! Chiyu, did you call it?!”

  “Calling it, it’s kinda like— So, like, Enemies react to sound, right? When I was walking around looking for a laser-using Enemy last night, I had the idea that maybe I could call together Enemies from a wide range if I used my bell just right. So I tried a bunch of different things.”

  “A-a wide range? What would you have done if a whole lot of them had shown up?”

  “It was a little iffy this one time, true.” She stuck her tongue out playfully as she informed him of this rather serious fact, then moved her right hand to call up her Instruct menu for some purpose.

  You could set all kinds of different conditions for the visibility or invisibility of this system window, but as a rule, tag-team partners and Legion members could see it, so Haruyuki could also see the window as it opened with a kashak sound effect. Chiyuri’s finger moved once more, and the display changed to a list of abilities and special attacks.

  Lime Bell’s only special attack should have been Citron Call. With this in mind, Haruyuki stared at the screen and then quietly cried out. Because, in the ability column, there was a row of text shining radiantly.

  “Acoustic Summon…Call with sound? When did you—? This ability…”

  “I told you, last night. After I managed to call an Enemy the first time, I opened Instruct, and surprise! There was this ability suddenly shining there.”

  “Th-there was? That’s great…” Before the desire to applaud Chiyuri’s hard work and creativity, Haruyuki honestly felt defeat. He had been assigned a mission with a high level of difficulty: Obtain the Theoretical Mirror ability. Even after he was evaporated ten times by the Red King’s main armament, he hadn’t been able to come up with anything; he couldn’t help comparing his own dumb self with Chiyuri.

  But having no doubt seen precisely what was going on in his head, Chiyuri bopped Crow on the head. “Okay, look,” she said, in an exasperated voice. “Acoustic Summon and the Theoretical Mirror that you’re trying for are on totally different levels! All I can use mine for is to call Enemies. Although if I could pull out hidden Burst Linkers, too, that would be super handy.”